Climate change is making kids sick; a paediatrician’s book describes ‘the biggest crime’
Children worldwide are suffering the effects of climate change, both physically and mentally, says Dr Debra Hendrickson in her new book
Debra Hendrickson used to avoid bringing up climate change at work. A paediatrician in Reno, in the US state of Nevada, she treated kids for everything from asthma to depression without pulling their parents aside to explain how rising global temperatures are compromising human health.
Until 2018.
That summer, Hendrickson was treating a boy for exposure to wildfire smoke from California, in a hospital room he shared with another boy also struggling to breathe. Looking out at the hazy sky, one of the kids’ fathers asked what was happening.
Hendrickson, who has a background in forestry and environmental science, decided to be blunt. “It’s climate change,” she said. To her relief, no one scoffed, stormed out or demanded a new doctor.
Six years later, Hendrickson regularly brings up climate change with patients and their parents – so much so that in July she released her first book. In The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Frontlines of Climate Change, she shares anecdotes and explains the ways climate change is making kids sick, sometimes fatally so.
